What hackers know of the Nintendo Switch so far

There’s been a lot of speculation about the possibilities to hack the Nintendo Switch already. With the device in the hands of hackers for just a small week, it’s unlikely that any group has made any significant progress so far (but hey, nothing’s impossible, we did hack the PSP emulator on the PS Vita on day 1).

Nevertheless, it’s obvious that some people are already digging in the guts of the device to look for hardware and software flaws.

The Nintendo switch has a browser, it’s (not very well) hidden

Nintendo announced the Switch would not ship with a browser. In practice, it’s required for any modern device to have a browser, if only to access some Wifi endpoints that required to “sign in” on an html-based form. It turns out, this browser exists on the Nintendo Switch, and has already been hijacked to access a few sites, and even to watch videos on youtube or Plex.

As to what that browser is, it appears to be a webkit-based (not a tough guess, pretty much all browsers are webkit-based nowadays) piece of software, likely Access Netfront NX. (Which wouldn’t be a surprise. Access is a Japanese company that’s been providing the Netfront browser to a bunch of embedded devices in the past). From the hacking perspective, a webkit-based browser means that webkit vulnerabilities could be leveraged to hack the Nintendo Switch.

The Nintendo Switch OS might be a new iteration of the 3DS OS, and/or might be reusing some components of the FreeBSD Kernel

Hacker Marcan (who, for someone who says he does not intend to hack the Switch, has already looked a lot into its internals 🙂 ) has stated that the Switch OS might be based on FreeBSD, due to some of the licensing text on the Switch mentioning FreeBSD. If the Switch was based on FreeBSD, it would be the second console this generation to use FreeBSD, after the PS4. The benefits, from a hacking standpoint, would be that hacks for one of the devices would be likely to be adapted for the other one.

Conversely, it is also possible that the Switch only reuses parts of FreeBSD and is not based on it. Hacker Plutoo has mentioned that from his early investigations, the Switch OS seems to be very similar to the 3DS OS, with similar syscalls. He mentions however that it is most likely a rewrite (in other words, don’t expect 3DS hacks to work on the Nintendo Switch)

Nintendo Switch hack when?

That’s really the gist of it. Although I’m sure hackers are already looking into the console’s internals, not much is known about it at this point. Console manufacturers have been ramping up their skills on security over the past decade, and although Nintendo might not be at Sony or Microsoft levels in terms of security, it’s sure they’ve been learning from their past experience.

As always, the question is probably not “if” but “when” security vulnerabilities will be discovered for the Nintendo Switch.

They (Sony and Nintendo) should work like are working a lot of game makers on Android, Apple store and even some games on steam in my opinion, games should be free with an interesting shop (if you pay you can earn time or some skins or any *** like this). They should be able to sell more devices with higher prices, be more attractive and probably make more money (if the game and his shop are good) than selling 1game/1player. What do you guys think about it ?

Due to current laws, it is perfectly legal to hack any product you own as long as it doesn’t create a danger to yourself or those around you. Nintendo can ban you from using online services, but it would be impossible to ban someone from buying their products that are readily available at nearly every electronics store in existence. Get out of fantasy land. The Switch will get hacked regardless of what you think and they will NOT get sued.

I would really doubt that hacking the switch would kill it . 3ds has been hacked and it is so easy to hack and play games but it still offered new and interesting games every year. On the other hand vita which has not been hacked until resently did not do well despite the lack of piracy. If they produce good games in a reasonable price ı don’t see it failing. Also since online play will be priced anyway ı don’t think piracy would affect that much.

Let me put this simply for you. Your parents get diabietes, yeah, they won’t be dead, they can still live for quite a while. Your sons or your daughers get HIV, yeah, they won’t be killed immediately neither.

So, yeah. Enough with your boogeyman nonsense, hope they get those sooner.

Hacking a console won’t kill it. If an open system was able to be killed off due to piracy or whatever then PC would’ve died a long time ago, but it’s the second biggest gaming market behind mobile, another system(iOS, Android, Windows) that’s easily hacked.

PC Isn’t just for gaming. Plus each time you buy a windows computer you’re paying the maker of the pc, then Microsoft, the only thing you’re ripping off is the games developer where Sony and Nintendo rely on game sales to make profit because they get next to nothing on hardware sale even so you’re still ripping of the developer. So yes piracy does boost the console sales but ruins the reputation of the console makers. Developers don’t want to make games based on the last consoles (PSP, Wii) piracy abilities. Take the vita for example.

For some reason, having an open system generally means that the market for that device increases. From a piracy standpoint, pirates who don’t buy their games wouldn’t buy them anyyhow. I laugh at people claiming that piracy kills a device, when in fact it doesn’t. What would kill the device is poor support and overpriced games *COUGH*VITA*COUGH*. Most people who may pirate a game will end up purchasing it later because of the benefits of having a legitimate copy. For example, I know a few people who pirated rocket league who bought a copy asap because the pirated copy lacks online. People just love the ability to have control over their devices. From something as simple as a custom theme to make their device unique to features that are not normally included. From my current experience with the PS4, sony is doing a better job of adding in things that makes me not want to stick to an old firm, loose online, just to run linux. Sure I don’t get to play pokemon colosseum on it, but I have a PC for that. If companies also tried learning from what the homebrew base does, it would only benefit them. The incentive to jailbreak iOS is getting less and less because apple takes the ideas from tweaks and officially implements them. Instead of trying to overdue their security (though they do a pretty good job at that as well) they actually try to bring in features officially as a deterrent for hacking the device. it’s starting to work as well. (due note I actually HATE apple products, but think they are smart about how they approach hacking). The biggest thing sony could do that would make the PS4 of mine anti hack if there is ever a good one for running unsigned code would be to open up something similar to PSM without the paranoid security crippling the system, following Nintendo and Microsoft’s concept of open development. People could them make tweaks and mods officially, and sony could see what things people come up with to further improve their current or even future devices. This actually applies to all companies, not just game console manufacturers. I also applaud Nintendo for making the switch devkits affordable this generation for indie developers. paying over $2k to develop is just overpriced and not feasible. $450 is affordable, and I have a game I am working on that I could port at that price.

I also like how game devs like yourself assures people that an open system doesn’t welcome piracy, but people will still cry foul anyway. Valve and CD Projekt Red also says piracy doesn’t affect anything and they pretty much sum up a large portion of the PC gaming market.

[…] is full of mobile ports, the Switch is not a phone/tablet. Architecturally it is based on 3DS and custom coding. It is far easier to bring games to the Switch than previous Nintendo consoles but Epic would still […]

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